[Matrixbeast]

Quote:

Originally Posted by decepticusprime

if they dont have a human form we cant ever see them emote and they never interact with the rest of the cast. thats why i dont give a crap about omega because they never gave a reason for me to care about him.

I'm not asking to for you to care about him.
I'm asking why is the concept of his character is "Retarded."
We've had plenty of rangers who never emoted and solely existed to fill out a colored suit. But when we get a character to cut the nitty gritty and just be the suit, it's suddenly "Retarded." Why?

[KRX]

And my trek through Jungle Fury continues! I just finished up the episode where R.J. saves Flit. Some additional thoughts:

*R.J.'s Morpher... where did it come from? Its introduction is a bit awkward, but, assuming that R.J. built it at the same time he built the Solar Morphers, then it might follow the Zordon principle of, "Never unnecessarily escalate a fight."
*If Master Finn is R.J.'s father, in addition to having fought in the great battle 10,000 years ago, how old is R.J.? How old is R.J.'s mother? Who's R.J.'s mother? If a tree falls, and no one is around to hear it, does it really make a sound?
*Flit's voice is incredibly annoying. Why can't he have a better voice?
*Casey's not that great of a leader; he doesn't really take charge in battle until it's mentioned that he does.

[Locke]

I actually think for someone who is a ball of light, Omega has a lot of personality and presence.

But yeah the handling of RJ and Dom's powers was AWFUL luckily we got to see werewolf RJ first.

[Locke]

So I'm on the first part of the Reflections two parter and I have to say, I'm really enjoying SPD. It mixes up a lot of the core elements that Sentai seem to include now because they just feel the have too, no matter how tired those aspects have become, so the series manages to feel really fresh despite being almost ten years old. And even when it conforms to those basic Sentai aspects, it makes sure to do it kicking and screaming critiquing it all the way.

Seeing the worst past villains all together like their own team was especially awesome and badass. And this new villain who uses reflections is damn impressive so far, I love his voice and his intelligence, I hope he lives up to all this in fight sequences. I'm guessing he will as the fights in this show are fantastic.

About the only disappointment was the Battlizer. I'm not a big fan of these upgrades as they have the same clunky design as the megazords do but this one gets the added bonus of a weird leather thong.

I also love Sky as a character, I know you aren't really supposed to like him but I dunno I guess it makes me appreciate him more because he is an asshole. Because those rare vulnerable moments where he opens up or has fun feel more special and they come at just the right times so he feels consistent without also becoming a drag. I mean he isn't perfect, far from it, but he's the best of a bad bunch and the one who comes closest in this series to well written.

His actual actor is pretty good as well, I loved the little details to his performance as he recounted about his Dad's death. Although I wonder if he'll turn up alive at some point since Power Rangers doesn't usually let dark things like this stick around.

How does the continuity in this series work though? Did they just have spare props and use them or are the Space Rangers and Time Force all connected to SPD somehow? Or is the answer both?

The second part of Reflections was unintentionally hilarious, with the Magical Girl mecha. That said Sky going Red to take down Mirloc and get vengeance for his Dad was EPIC. Stop this SPD, I am falling in love with you.

[ZeoRangerV]

Reflections was pretty damn good for taking a story about an entirely different ranger and making it about Sky. The only trace it really left of the Dekaranger plot was the Omega Ranger smashing the mirror (which imo felt really out of place in SPD)

[Locke]

Quote:

Originally Posted by ZeoRangerV

Reflections was pretty damn good for taking a story about an entirely different ranger and making it about Sky. The only trace it really left of the Dekaranger plot was the Omega Ranger smashing the mirror (which imo felt really out of place in SPD)

It sorta fit in a meta sense, since they've been hitting us pretty hard over the head with how amazing Omega is.

[Locke]

Roughly ten episodes away from the end of SPD now and here is my reason that I'm not enamoured with the series for all those that care:

So the way SPD feels is like this, Kalish watched DekaRanger and pencilled out a vague set of heroes, villains and a setting. He then went to either end of the children's TV writers spectrum and created two teams from either end, he explained to them his vague outline and then said they could fill in the blanks with whatever they wanted after they had watched Deka Ranger.

So the first team, who believe that children's TV shouldn't assume children are stupid, saw Deka Ranger as a great way to really mix up Power Rangers in both the more slower paced action of police work and also as a humorous critique of the series all wrapped in a mature storyline full of actual conflict that really push the soccer Mum boundaries. A sort of RPM prototype or similar to the Dragon Knight Kamen Rider adaptation.

The second team, a bunch of late twenties something's drinking pepsi max with the flipped round baseball caps are sat in a living room watching sports.

"So Kalish wants us to watch some fag ass chinese power rangers knock off but subtitles are gay who wants to READ a movie!"

They high five and chuckle to themselves.

"But like we need to write something or we wont have money for sports merchandise."

"Well you remember MMPR right? The only Power Rangers series because all the others that I don't recognise that came after that are for kids and fat chicks."

"Haha fat people."

A round more of high fives and laughs continue.

"So yeah what was MMPR about again?"

"From what I remember there were loads of villains with personalities and voices that didn't match their personalities at all, who would say stupid shit to take all the drama and the tension out of the scenes."

"I'm typing this into my iPad it's gold! So what about the characters and the police theme and stuff?"

"MMPR never did anything to convince us it was actually them in the suits other than taking their helmets off."

"Good point!"

"And if we just make all the characters annoying then we've given them all depth without doing anything!"

"Perfect!"

So the two sets of writers went back with their stories for SPD and Kalish decided that...MMPR that is vaguely in the future and sorta about police if they really must is by far the better series. Realising he had already paid those other writers though, he decided to splash elements of their story around and give them a chance to actually have a few of their stories filmed.

What does this clash of tones do? Not only does it show off how great SPD could have been if they stuck with a mature police procedural show but it also highlights just how utterly crap the rest of the series is.

And not only that but the two kinds of shows are so different it actually hurts to watch at times from whiplash as we go from sinister and intelligent villains to villains who are just as strong but played entirely for comic relief for no real story reason. As the show goes from a fairly slow paced, intelligent and well used depiction of a future police force to a bunch of idiots bumming around until the next bit of sentai footage. As the characters go from deeply layered following interesting arcs to immature children in the next episode. As plot lines come up that are so mind blowingly stupid that they almost contradict everything the show stands for just urgh.

[ljacone]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Matrixbeast

Eh. I'm not a fan.

Personally, I think that kaijin generally should be able to speak. They are on a one-to-one level with the hero(es), so they should be able to converse with them.

Daikaiju, on the other hand, should most of the time not speak. It should be a rare case for a giant monster to speak rather than simply roar, snarl, shriek, etc. And those rare cases should be for special reason; ie, the Alien races from the Showa Ultra shows, the satantic Mefilas, the "audio virus" Skorn from SSSS, etc.

[ljacone]

Locke, I want to say two things:

First off, I never got an MMPR vibe off of SPD except in the broadest of senses. SPD for one thing was not nearly as formulaic as MMPR. Whether that is a good thing or not is up to the viewer. The villains were not nearly as comical, either. There's goofball stuff, no doubt, but I don't remember SPD ending episodes with Grumm bonking his toadies on the head. Which would have been AWESOME but that's neither here nor there.

Secondly, iPad's didn't exist in 2003. Your reference should have been "my Powerbook."

[Locke]

Quote:

Originally Posted by ljacone

Locke, I want to say two things:

First off, I never got an MMPR vibe off of SPD except in the broadest of senses. SPD for one thing was not nearly as formulaic as MMPR. Whether that is a good thing or not is up to the viewer. The villains were not nearly as comical, either. There's goofball stuff, no doubt, but I don't remember SPD ending episodes with Grumm bonking his toadies on the head. Which would have been AWESOME but that's neither here nor there.

Secondly, iPad's didn't exist in 2003. Your reference should have been "my Powerbook."

Really? I still remember their 'greatest threat' Devastation sounding like a stoned surfer. Or the time two villains who successfully built and stole SWAT tech and kicked the heroes around the curb were both portrayed as incompetent and stupid. Those are recent examples and I could give you more if I went back over them again like Bugglesworth. It's shit like that that gives me the MMPR vibe.

It's also when characters go through entire arcs, learn a lot and really change for the better only for the next episode to have them at the start again. I can't actually count the sheer number of times Jack and Sky have butted heads before realising that they are better off as a team and forming a friendship but they've done that whole song and dance a damn few number of times, along with the rest of the team.

Every time it feels like something is about to progress the shitty side of the writing drags it back to the beginning again. It's like the good writers are literally battling against the shit writers to make the show go somewhere good and the shit writers keep pushing them back.